George Bush’s Legacy: Revisiting Past Claims

As the nation remembers the former president, we assess some popular anecdotes about him, including his reaction to a grocery store scanner and whether Ross Perot cost him a second term.

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A visit President George Bush made to the National Grocers Association convention in Florida during the 1992 campaign cemented the impression that he was detached from middle-class life. CreditCreditBarry Thumma/Associated Press

After his defeat in the 1992 election, former President George Bush concluded that he lost his bid for a second term because he “just wasn’t a good enough communicator” and blamed the news media for the perception that he was out of touch with the average American. Certain claims are again abounding as the country prepares to bury Mr. Bush after his death on Friday. Here’s a look at some of them.

Was he really amazed by a grocery store scanner?

A visit Mr. Bush made to the National Grocers Association convention in Florida during the 1992 campaign cemented the impression that he was detached from middle-class life.

He signed his name on an electronic pad used to detect check forgeries. “If some guy came in and spelled George Bush differently, could you catch it?” the president asked. “Yes,” he was told, and he shook his head in wonder.

Then he grabbed a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy and ran them over an electronic scanner. The look of wonder flickered across his face again as he saw the item and price registered on the cash register screen.

“This is for checking out?” asked Mr. Bush. “I just took a tour through the exhibits here,” he told the grocers later. “Amazed by some of the technology.”

The episode elicited derision in editorials: The Boston Globe cited it as an example of Mr. Bush’s “12 years’ vacation from the real world,” referring to his eight years as vice president and four as commander in chief. A column in Newsday described Mr. Bush as “dumbfounded” and “still out of touch.” And The Washington Post wrote Mr. Bush a quick pocket guide to other modern technologies like cable TV and microwaves.

Mr. Bush’s aides pushed back on how the president was characterized. A systems analyst who showed Mr. Bush the scanner told The Associated Press that he was “amazed at the ability of the scanner to take that torn label and reassemble it” — a new feature at the time.

Still, the story lived on and was repeated during the 1992 campaign and long after. In an interview months later, Hillary Clinton referred to the incident to argue that a new president should “recognize the reality of people’s lives.”

That summer, Mr. Bush awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to N. Joseph Woodland, who invented the bar code.

What was his role in the Iran-contra scandal?

During both his presidential campaigns, Mr. Bush publicly distanced himself from the Iran-contra scandal, in which the American government secretly traded arms to free hostages and used the funds to support rebels in Nicaragua.

In an August 1987 interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Bush claimed that he was “not in the loop” on discussions about selling arms to Iran. In that same article, an aide to Mr. Bush suggested he may not have been present at a meeting of high-ranking administration officials who were discussing the arms-for-hostages swap.

Those statements would later be contradicted by Mr. Bush’s testimony to the F.B.I. and the independent counsel investigating the scandal, his diary and statements from other administration officials.

In a 1986 interview with the F.B.I. and in a 1988 deposition, Mr. Bush “acknowledged that he was regularly informed of events connected with the Iran arms sales,” according to the independent counsel report that was published in 1993.

A note from Caspar W. Weinberger, the former defense secretary, was released in the final days of the 1992 campaign. The memo detailed a meeting in January 1986 in which Mr. Weinberger discussed the arms-for-hostages swap, and Mr. Bush favored the deal.

And in an excerpt from Mr. Bush’s diary, released in January 1993, the former president wrote of the hostage situation, “I’m one of the few people that know fully the details, and there is a lot of flack and misinformation out there.”

The independent counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, wrote in his final report that he also hoped to interview Mr. Bush again to address what he described as a number of other inconsistencies between the available evidence and the president’s testimony, including from when he was vice president. Mr. Walsh never received his second interview.

Did Ross Perot cost him his re-election bid?

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From left, Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and Mr. Bush conclude their final debate, in Lansing, Mich., in 1992.CreditJ. David Ake/Agence France-Presse

Ross Perot, an independent candidate who earned almost 19 percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, is often cited as the reason Mr. Bush lost to Bill Clinton. Yet electionexperts have challenged that theory.

Mr. Perot’s effect “on the campaign’s outcome appears to have been minimal,” The Times reported shortly after the election, citing how his voters were more or less evenly split between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush. The Washington Post concurred, writing that Mr. Perot’s absence would have flipped one state to Mr. Bush’s ledger — but Mr. Clinton would have still won handily.

Scholarly research largely supports those analyses. A 1995 study found that Mr. Perot siphoned voters from Mr. Bush, but not enough to overcome Mr. Clinton’s lead. A 1999 article in an academic journal agreed that Mr. Perot’s absence would not have altered the result of the election but concluded that he had actually reduced Mr. Clinton’s margin of victory over Mr. Bush. It also suggested that one in five voters supporting Mr. Perot would have sat out the election had he not been on the ballot.

What was his record on the H.I.V./AIDS crisis?

Compared to President Ronald Reagan, who is often believed to be the American leader who failed to adequately address the epidemic, Mr. Bush signed two pieces of legislation related to the crisis. One protected AIDS patients from discrimination and another created a federally funded program for people with the disease.

But over all, his record is mixed, AIDS activists say. They contend Mr. Bush did not do enough to fund research on the disease and failed to adopt recommendations from the National AIDS Commission on sex education and needle exchanges.